APPLIED MYSTICISM: A DRUG-ENABLED VISIONARY EXPERIENCE AGAINST MORAL BLINDNESS with Virginia Ballesteros, Applied Mysticism: A Drug-Enabled Visionary Experience against Moral Blindness; and Richard H. Jones, Limitations on the Scientific Study of Drug-Enabled Mystical Experiences.

Intellectuals such as William James and Aldous Huxley have thought it possible to develop a technique to apply to this world the mystical-type insights gained during drug-enabled experiences. Particularly, Huxley claimed that the visionary experience triggered by psychedelics could help us rethink our relationship with technology and promote a much-needed cultural change. In this article, we explore this hypothesis. To do so, we build a philosophical framework based on Gunther Anders's philosophy of technique, presenting human beings as morally blind when facing technological development. Mystical experiences are then proposed as a means to improve our moral faculties-and psychedelic drugs as tools to enable them. We finally explore the empirical feasibility of such a hypothesis by thoroughly reviewing the recent scientific literature on the nature of the psychedelic experience, concluding that the long-term effects in the personality domain openness and in nature relatedness point to the emergence of a morally improved agent, thus providing substance to an application of mysticism.